LETTERS: Let’s say no again to the Garden Bridge

Main Image :

Impression of how the Thomas Heatherwick-designed Garden Bridge across the Thames might look. Image: arup

Published: 13 January, 2017

• IN your January 6 edition you carried a very interesting front-page story about the call-in of elements of the Garden Bridge project (New doubts over ‘vanity’ bridge plan) focusing on the property transactions involving public land near Temple Underground station.

When the “Garden Bridge” project was first subject to public consultation the Westminster Society, as the recognised civic amenity organisation for the area, registered a formal objection to the proposals as they stood at that time.

Subsequent developments, not least in assessing whether the project represented value for money, have not given us any reasons to change our earlier view.

The “call-in” offers another opportunity for a thorough rethink of the value of the project as a whole; we can only hope that common sense prevails and that the project is finally cancelled. Taxpayers should expect nothing less than a full reappraisal of the worth of the project to the public sector.